Local Grunge Legends Reissue Album In Cassette Form

The name Butterfingers may strike a chord or two to those who were old enough to remember or experience the band’s music when they were active between the mid-90s to early-2000s. With six studio albums under their belt, many have deemed Butterfingers as one of the finest bands that ever came out from the local underground scene.

One such album is called Transcendence which was released in 1999. With more than 60,000 units sold according to the band’s founder Khairil “Loque” Ridzwan Anuar in an interview with Berita Harian two years ago, the album had generally propelled the band’s music to the mainstream audience.

Fast forward to almost 23 years later, Butterfingers had announced on its Facebook page earlier this week that the band is making Transcendence available to fans once again. What made the news rather interesting though is that the reissue album which is called Transcendence 99, is being released in cassette form.

From the image that was published on the Facebook page, you can immediately notice the aesthetic differences between Transcendence 99 and the original release. For example, the reissued cassette does not have the same see-through body as the original and there is also a Universal Music logo on it instead of EMI.

Furthermore, Transcendence 99 features digitally remastered audio although the band didn’t provide in-depth information regarding the remastering process or the level of audio quality that fans can expect from the reissue. Nevertheless, it is really intriguing to see a cassette release from an artist at a time where music streaming service has become a norm, while vinyl is the usual media of choice when it comes to music-related collector’s items.

Then again, it seems that the cassette format is somewhat going through a revival for the past few years, with more than 185,000 cassette tapes sold in the UK last year according to a report by DJ Mag. Well, perhaps it is a good time for us to dig up our old cassette players, or acquire a new one… such as the IT’S OK Bluetooth cassette player that came out a couple of years back.